Friday, April 12, 2013

My hero / Mae West by Kathy Lette






My hero: Mae West by Kathy Lette


 'We can only marvel at the business acumen of a woman who invented the droit morale in her Paramount contracts, meaning each film had to be made "to her satisfaction"'

 Kathy Lette
Friday 12 April 2013 16.00 BST
A
s if Mae West's mix of talents – comedian, playwright, director, producer, novelist and sex siren – weren't enough to make any writer impale herself on her pen, she was also a feminist who makes Madonna look like Julie Andrews, an intellectual who rubbed shoulders with the Roosevelts, and a civil libertarian who went to jail in defence of freedom of expression.

Today, when the only creative muscle exercised by cinema stars is in their control-top knickers, and screen-writers are the most put-upon of literary prostitutes, we can only marvel at the business acumen of a woman who invented the droit morale in her Paramount contracts, meaning each film had to be made "to her satisfaction".

It was during the Wall Street crash and the struggles of the New Deal that West first mounted her unique pedestal: an icon who raised eyebrows for a living.
Her first play, which she wrote, directed and starred in, was coolly titled Sex. When raided by the police, rather than close the play, West chose to stand trial. The judge convicted her of "corrupting the morals of youth" and sentenced her to 10 days in jail where she witnessed enough homosexuality to write her next play, The Drag. Opening night saw an unscheduled third act a team of New York's finest rushed on stage and arrested the entire cast. The box office declared her "not guilty" and the US supreme court was later to recognise as a defence to obscenity that she had a "redeeming social purpose".
She combined sexuality with satire, at a time when Bible-bashing, prohibition America desperately needed a cure for its irony deficiency.

But what makes West so fascinating is that she accomplished all this in an era when women were meant to be decorative and domesticated. Her domesticity was limited to the sowing of wild oats and the barbecuing of sacred cows - entire herds.
In a man's world, she had what it took to take what they had.
• This article was amended on 15 April 2013. An unedited version had been uploaded to the website. This has been corrected.

THE GUARDIAN



2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016

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